Apparatus for child care includes a number of devices intended to support the child in one or more postures, such as lying, sitting or standing. Use of a different apparatus for each purpose results in the necessity for accumulating a number of separate devices. Such accumulation not only creates additional cost for such apparatus but also creates a need for storage space and often requires transportation of several separate devices when traveling with a child. Partly because of this fact, attempts have been made to develop apparatus which serve more than one purpose, such as being convertible from a configuration appropriate for one use to a configuration appropriate for another use. The differing uses can be uses which occur at different times of the day or uses which occur during different periods of development during the child's life.
One example of a convertible device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,550,998, issued Dec. 29, 1970 to Boudreau, et al. In this device, a rigid body is mounted on running gear so that it can be oriented from a generally upright position to a generally horizontal position. However, because the chIld support portion is a rigid body, it is not itself reconfigured between the stroller configuration and the carriage configuration. The carriage configuration is appropriate only for supporting the child in a supine and not in a prone position. Moreover, there is no side wall or end wall protection in the area of the head or foot and there is no change of relationship between the seat portion and back portion during the change in configuration.
In this connection, it is important to note that a bassinet, baby carriage or baby buggy configuration is traditionally found most useful for young infants, for example, up to the age of about five or six months. After this age, children typically asssume a sitting position and are often too active to be easily transported in a bassinet-shaped child support. Further, typically at an age of 12 to 18 months, the child is too large to lie in the bassinet with full body support, i.e. substantially planar support from head to foot.
On the other hand, parents of children less than five or six months are often reluctant to position such children in a stroller configuration because such young children are typically less able to support themselves in an upright posture. Once children are of an age where they can support themselves in an upright or sitting posture from approximately the age of five or six months, a stroller is often used and can be useful up to the age at which the child is too large to be accommodated by the stroller, for example, at three to four years.
Thus, children up to age five or six months are often transported in a bassinet or carriage and less frequently in a stroller configuration while after the age of five or six months, children are less frequently transported in a bassinet and more frequently in a stroller.
One manner of dealing with the transition from predominantly recumbent posture to predominantly upright posture is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,871,701, issued Mar. 18, 1975 to Gesslein. In this patent, part or all of the floor portion of the carriage is lowered to accommodate a sitting, standing or kneeling infant. In this patent, the same member, or a portion thereof, which is used for horizontal support in recumbent position is also used for horizontal support for the upright position. The change in configuration requires pivoting of several parts about several axes and the resultant structure can be relatively expensive to construct and requires a number of relatively expensive pivoting parts. The dropped-bottom configuration has an increased volume with respect to the original configuration which must be accommodated or taken into account in connection to the running gear, particularly when the running gear is foldable. The side walls retain their original configuration during the dropping of the floor and positioning of the sun shade must be made considering the shading effect of the side walls.
Accordingly, there is a need for a child support device which is convertible between a configuration appropriate for a reclining position and a configuration appropriate for a sitting position which can accommodate a plurality of postures in the reclining position and which is relatively inexpensive in terms of the necessary parts and in terms of the difficulty of construction. There is further a need for such an apparatus which is relatively easy to convert from one configuration to another and can preferably be converted using a single hand, such as when the other hand is holding a child.